Nursing home owner covered up sexual attacks on elderly

Nursing home owner and society figure Therese Lipsett covered up a series of sex attacks on an elderly woman in her care, reports the Mail Online.

Members of Lipsett's staff at the Rostrevor home in Dublin told the owner that one of the nurses, Stuart William Cummings, was getting into bed with elderly women, exposing himself to her, touching her sexually and making her touch him.

Despite the warnings from her staff, Lipsett, who opened the home in 1984, did not contact the police or the HSE. Nor did she have the Cummings fired or the victim medically examined. Insteadm she let the abuser carry on working as before, unsupervised.

According to nursing body An Bord Altranais, Lipsett's inaction exposed the elderly victim and other patients to further sexual attacks.
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The report also stated that Cummings brought alcohol into the home and was under the influence while working.

Furthermore, when Cummings was later fired from the south Dublin home, Lipsett provided fake references for jobs at a hospital and a nursing agency, thereby exposing other elderly people to the assaults.

These shocking revelations were discovered when police swooped down on the nursing home, which had been shut down by health watchdogs after separate allegations of physical abuse against patients by another staff member.

Lipsett's family are insisting that the allegations are false.

The attacks took place in 2005 but were not investigated until 2008, when a former staffer of the home reported them to the nursing board. However, Lipsett and Cummings were not struck off the nursing register until late 2010.

Health watchdogs would not say where Cummings worked after Rostrevor or whether similar allegations were made against him at subsequent places of employment.

Lipsett was still able to hand the home over to her two daughters and remain involved behind the scenes for several months. The Nursing Board ruling against her was made in Lipsett's maiden name and did not name her nursing home. Relatives of patients at Rostrevor have never been told what happened.